News from the world of Maths

Would you like to present engaging mathematics sessions to young people? The Royal Institution of Great Britain (Ri) is offering development sessions for new Ri mathematics masterclass speakers as part of the celebration of the 30th anniversary of the programme. The network stretches from Aberdeen to Truro, including Jersey and Northern Ireland, and is ever-expanding.

Have you read any of the articles, or listened to any of the podcasts, from our project Constructing our lives: the mathematics of engineering? If yes, then please take the time to complete our 3-minute online survey about the project. It will remain open until Friday 26th August and when it's closed, one lucky participant will win a £50 voucher from Amazon.

Here's your chance to venture to the frontiers of physics using your very own computer. This week CERN began public testing of LHC@home 2.0, a project that enlists the computing power of volunteers from around the world to help simulate high-energy collisions of protons in the LHC.

A team of nanoengineers have constructed new materials that don't wrinkle when you stretch them. This makes them similar to tissue found in the human body, so they may in the future be used to repair damaged heart walls, blood vessels and skin.

Convex or concave? It's a question we usually answer just by looking at something. It's convex if it bulges outwards, and concave if it bulges inwards. But when it comes to mathematical functions, things aren't that simple. A team of computer scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have recently shown that deciding whether a mathematical function is convex can be very hard indeed.

Whatever you're planning to do tonight, cancel it! Because tonight at 9pm on BBC Two it's the first episode of Marcus du Sautoy's new series The Code. It's a three-part series about maths in the world around us, exploring anything from honeycombs to flocks of birds, nautilus shells to planetary motion.

Did you know slime mould can recreate the Tokyo subway network? Or the special connection between crickets and Kevin Bacon? Samuel Hansen does and he wants to tell you all the weird and unexpected stories from the mathematical world... but he needs your help.